Computer

No one has much space nowadays behind the counter it is in the checkout area, and people want to use the space for practical things that sell rather than big computers. So here is a picture of our current computer specially built with a point of sale areas where it is often hot and dusty.

WIFI now is indispensable and here are some tips if you have problems with your WIFI signal in your retail shop.

Measure the problem

You cannot do much till you have measurements, the WIFI app that I like to use to help me judge WIFI signal strength is WIFI Overview 360 Pro available on google play free. I suggest you first get a copy.

Now look at the position of the modem

All too often technicians tend to put the cables so modems in the office area which is an out of the way place in the shop. As walls and doors all block the WIFI signal so putting the modem in the office room is often wrong. This is not good for WIFI modems. The WIFI modem should be as central as possible in the shop hopefully near the main areas where people use WIFI.

Move things away

Move away from anything from the modem that blocks the signal.

Up higher

What we find works well is to raise the WIFI modem, the higher the better. Because it sometimes is an eyesore what you can do is put the modem in a nice material bag and hang it up on the wall. Do not use a plastic bag for this.

Silver foil

A neat trick here which you can experiment with to boost the WIFI signal is put silver foil between the modem and the wall. Some WIFI signal in the shop will bounce off the metal foil back onto the modem.

Reduce the number of devices you use

Try reducing the number of items using the WIFI in the shop, too many WIFI devices can cause problems. Maybe you cannot provide all your staff with WIFI in the shop to their mobile phone.

Reduce electrical interference

Try to reduce the electrical interference particularly from other WIFI modems. I remember going to a neighbours shop and talking to the owner there to make some compromise in the positions of the WIFI modems as their modem was interfering with our client's modem. This is a particularly big problem in shopping centres where there are heaps of WIFI modems, cordless phones, etc all belching radio signals.

Try changing the channels on your modem

Try changing the channels that your WIFI modem uses. As a rule, 5 GHz is faster but works on a shorter distance while 2.4 GHz gives a longer range. Experiment with both and see what works best for you.

Antenna adjustment

Try putting the antennas in different directions say one vertically and the other flat. WIFI signals come from all different directions.

Most of their revenue now comes from cloud-based products like Office 365.

Still, they are doing well out of Windows 10 updates. I am not surprised as its an excellent product and as a result, we have upgraded almost all our clients to Windows 10, but Microsoft has only about a year and a bit, of these upgrade left as Windows 7's free support which is very limited now will end on the 14 January 2020.

The article does state that Microsoft "has no intention of leaving money on the table, even if there never will be an explicit Windows X-to-Windows Y transition" but what does that mean for Windows, we still do not know?

This is why few people wait for a backup to be done if they use cloud. What they do is set it up and go home.

If you are at say 1Mbps just add another 1/3 to these figures or get your own figures.

However, this should be considered to being an ideal figure as there are still other several factors to consider.

The speed of your Internet will vary greatly, and so these speeds are only a rough guide. They also do not take into account overhead; your system does not only transmit your file but also checking information to verify the line so you can add another 15%.

The more files you are backing up, the longer preparation time that is required for each one. One point one of my competitors has not picked up on is that they are backing up too many files so slowing down the backup unnecessarily.

Few people can afford high-grade commercial on the Internet because of the cost which was something that Turnbull correctly pointed out was a fraud in the proposed NBN in the debate during the last election. As such your backup over the hours will probably be interrupted and will need to resume. This will slow you down more. It will also give you misleading figures as most backup software says it's six hours the backup. It will start 10 minutes of six hours, then 15 minutes of six hours and so on, but if it falls over say after two hours, it now needs four hours more to complete and shows 10 minutes of 4 hours, then 15 minutes of 4 hours and so on. If it fell over after another 30 minutes, it would now start to show 10 minutes of 3.5 hours, then 15 minutes of 3.5 hours and so on. If you looked at it, then you would think it was only 3.5 hours to do the backup. I have had people fooled by that.

Furthermore, your Internet speed varies greatly depending how many people are using it at that exact time, sometimes they drop to a small percentage of their rated speed. For example, in my area at home the Internet speed at 6:00pm goes right down and does not shots up again until about 1:00am. Then I get a good speed until about 8:00am.

If your computer or networks are being used by other processes, the backup time will be increased. Many people have their computers doing anti-virus sweeps, communication between them and suppliers, program updates, etc.

Lastly and this cannot be stressed too highly many cloud backup solutions, have limits and slow down your backups if you back up too much in a month. They may say that give you 30 GB but in practice, it is so slow that it is unusable. You need to check this before deciding on a cloud backup.